


Beautiful Golden Fools

by Azdaema



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Beautiful Golden Fools, F/M, Fandom, Metafiction, Other, Public Service Announcement, ao3 - Freeform, tagging
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-17
Updated: 2019-12-12
Packaged: 2020-05-13 10:20:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19249207
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Azdaema/pseuds/Azdaema
Summary: "Hi. Do you have a minute to talk to me about helping us all find proper Jaime/Cersei fics?"





	1. PSA

With the end of the show, there has been a recent influx of Jaime/Cersei fics. Which is great; I always need more of that in my life. Usually I prefer to find fic for them through collections and authors. But in the last few weeks, I've been keeping their tag bookmarked just because with the influx, it's actually statically _worth_ looking in the tag right now.

But it's no secret that their tag is a polluted cesspool. For a complete list of tags wrangled to there, see [here](https://archiveofourown.org/tags/Cersei%20Lannister*s*Jaime%20Lannister). It has all the barely-there versions ("minor," "background," "past," "implied," "mentioned") and a few even worse ones.

They have the dual problem of:

  1. Being a basic pillar of canon and thus _appearing_ in many fics that are not _about_ them in any meaningful way. This is what I call "The Ned/Cat Problem".
  2. Being deemed by some _so offensive_ that even the _slightest mention_ of them must be warned for. (If someone can't stomach even _that_ , how did they get into this fandom in the first place?)



So once again, I come with my plea: **Let's start tagging Jaime/Cersei fics written _by and for shippers_ with the tag [beautiful golden fools](https://archiveofourown.org/tags/Beautiful%20Golden%20Fools/works).** It's a phrase I've only ever heard used by fellow shippers, it's affectionate, and pretty damn on-point.

The basic idea is to create a tag which is _not_ the main J/C tag—one that _actually functions_ as a ship tag. New AO3 features—such as the "exclude search" options, or otp:true—are _game-changers_ , and I am so grateful. But over-tagging is ultimately a _user-based_ problem, and I believe needs a user-based solution.

This has already been done by Littlefinger/Sansa shippers. Both on tumblr and AO3, they use the tags creepyship and creepyshipping to find content for their oft-maligned ship and avoid vitriol. This tongue-in-cheek tag is an exclusively ingroup one. It seems to have worked reasonably well for them. Regardless of what you think of that _ship_ , I think you have to admire the _shippers_ for this workaround.


	2. 100 Works

We are on track to hit 100 works in the [Beautiful Golden Fools](https://archiveofourown.org/tags/Beautiful%20Golden%20Fools/works) tag by the end of this year.

Thank you so much to everyone who'd contributed to this—the AO3 tag wrangler who marked the tag common for us, everyone who's written fic and tagged it, everyone who went back and tagged their old fic, everyone who's commented on a fic that wasn't theirs, "Hey could you tag this beautiful golden fools?"

I first made a tumblr post about my idea for a beautiful golden fools tags back in June of 2018, but it didn't go anywhere then. I feel like Laura Linney in the Downton Abbey intro, but it is completely literally true: this would not be possible without the support of viewers like you. We made this happen this year.

So emboldened by that, here's another idea of mine which didn't go anywhere the first time, but which still might be worth pressuring: [a ship discord channel](https://discord.gg/q2bmWCw). In the comments section, I often want to talk more, but am quite aware of the fic's author getting notifications for each comment on their fic, and I feel awkward flooding it that way with something that doesn't even relate to the fic. Will this work out? Who knows. But I think it's worth giving it a shot.


End file.
